Information Renaissance

Information Renaissance Index

November 27, 2005
Picture the action--A demonstration of information networking--Good professional weblog from our colleagues at California State University, Dominguez Hills
November 27, 2005
A demonstration of information networking--Good professional weblog from our colleagues at California State University, Dominguez Hills
November 14, 2005
Renaissance in Sixteenth Century
November 13, 2005
Gordon Parks: True Renaissance man (Part 1)
November 09, 2005
University of Bologna--one of the oldest of the modern universities (with thoughts on investing in good schools)
November 08, 2005
Johann Gutenberg: The Early Early Dave Winer
Isabella d'Este--"The First Lady of the Renaissance"
October 14, 2005
GIOVANNI GABRIELI
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
October 13, 2005
Josquin Des Prez
October 11, 2005
Leone Battista Alberti--a Model Renaissance Man
October 14, 2005
GIOVANNI GABRIELI
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
October 13, 2005
Josquin Des Prez
October 11, 2005
Leone Battista Alberti--a Model Renaissance Man
The archetypal "Renaissance Man" at the Source: Leonardo da Vinci Notebooks Texts Available
August 24, 2005
Visit the Leonardo da Vinci Museum
July 18, 2005
A final thought: The CICS Master AS the Renaissance Man or Woman
June 11, 2005
Renaissance Podcast: Dr. Gillette's simultaneous Oxford/Ball State Presentation (Part 2 of 2)
Renaissance Podcast: Dr. Gillette's simultaneous Oxford/Ball State Presentation (Part 1 of 2)
June 07, 2005
Flyer for Presentation "Confidence in the Future: Succeed and Prosper in the Information Renaissance"
June 02, 2005
Renaissance: etymology, encyclopedia and enchantment, with a DCC twist
May 26, 2005
Atheism in the Renaissance
May 20, 2005
The History of Printing and Books
May 04, 2005
Renaissance Podcast!
May 01, 2005
On the impact of early printed books: Oxford Bodleian Library closes Incunabula Exhibit
March 24, 2005
Renaissance: Imporant to Oxford and to the game of tennis...
March 23, 2005
Florence -- More info on Duomo
March 21, 2005
Higher Education in the Renaissance
March 14, 2005
Link Renaissance Woman
March 13, 2005
The Attributes of the 21st Century Information Renaissance Era
March 11, 2005
Sofonisba Anguissola- The First Great Woman Artist of the Renaissance
March 01, 2005
Great Renaissance Link
February 26, 2005
"The Prince" Full Text Online
February 25, 2005
Human Factors Institute Research Colloquium Flyer: Dr. Frank Michael Groom on "Unlimited Presence"
February 24, 2005
The System Clock of the Renaissance...
February 21, 2005
Piet� (Mercy)
February 19, 2005
The Passion for the Art of Warfare
February 18, 2005
Florence Duomo
February 17, 2005
Tyranny of architecture?
February 15, 2005
In the Information Renaissance�Play the role of Renaissance Man or Woman
February 13, 2005
This is also a Michelangelo????
February 12, 2005
Modern Renaissance Perspectives

December 15, 2004
FACCTS reviewed from a usablity perspective...

December 12, 2004
Muncie Media in the Year 2014: Predicting a Day in Your Life
November 15, 2004
General Definition of the European Renaissance, with Links--from Web Museum, Paris
November 12, 2004
Poets of the Italian Renaissance: Vittoria Colonna
November 11, 2004
Michelangelo Buonarroti
October 31, 2004
Small Entry- link to Renaissance Webblog
October 29, 2004
Dear Friends of the Renaissance
October 26, 2004
Some Internet Sites on the European Renaissance

Picture the action--A demonstration of information networking--Good professional weblog from our colleagues at California State University, Dominguez Hills

This copies a weblog post to the Jay Gillette professional and personal weblog I made today. I use it as an example of "information networking"--the movement and use of information.

Information networking is the heart of the information economy.

Social change is driven first by information networking.

Information networking is how new worlds rise.

The entry below shows information networking in practice. It's a momentary snapshot of the action in the dynamic of the information renaissance.

The sense I am suggesting is that the static snapshot captures the dynamic action only for a moment.

Like the still photos in a sports section, the pictures capture only moments in time. Yet they give a sense of the game, the stakes, the intensity, the outcomes.

Take a look:

November 27, 2005
A demonstration of information networking--Good professional weblog from our colleagues at California State University, Dominguez Hills

Here is a good weblog from Professor Larry Press of the Computer Information Systems group at California State University, Dominguez Hills. The university is in the Los Angeles area. CSUDH is an active university with a reputation for trying out innovations. The university is important to its region, especially as a beacon of light demonstrating the power of education in a changing and complex environment.

The information about the CSUDH weblog is courtesy two professionals from Ball State University's Information Systems and Operations Management (ISOM) group--Professor Fred Kitchens and one of their graduate assistants, Geoff Ginther.

Geoff Ginther is also an active master's degree candidate at the Center for Information and Communication Sciences, Ball State University.

In the European renaissance in the birth of the modern period, scholars developed information links and networks by postal mail and books brought by couriers, carried by muscle power. Today's information renaissance scholars develop links using email and internetworks, forwarded by electrons.

The professionals here are information networking--which I define as the movement and use of information--so that people who are geographically distant can share ideas and perspectives.

It's how new eras are built--person by person, group by group, organization by organization. Like a building going up, you can see it happen, a little at a time. Construction projects are messy and complex--it takes imagination to remember how it was before, and to see what is to come.

Picture how it was; imagine how it will be. That's the unfolding history of today's information renaissance.

Renaissance in Sixteenth Century

English men and women of the sixteenth century experienced an unprecedented increase in knowledge of the world beyond their island. Religious persecution at home compelled a substantial number of both Catholics and Protestants to live abroad; wealthy gentlemen (and, in at least a few cases, ladies) traveled in France and Italy to view the famous cultural monuments; merchants published accounts of distant lands like Turkey, Morocco, Egypt, and Russia; and military and trading ventures took English ships to still more distant shores. In 1496, a Venetian tradesman living in Bristol, John Cabot, was granted a license by Henry VII to sail on a voyage of exploration, and with his son Sebastian discovered Newfoundland and Nova Scotia; in 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert returned to Newfoundland to try to establish a colony there. The Elizabethan age saw remarkable feats of seamanship and reconnaissance. On his ship the Golden Hinde, Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe in 1579 and laid claim to California on behalf of the queen; a few years later a ship commanded by Thomas Cavendish also accomplished a circumnavigation. Sir Martin Frobisher explored bleak Baffin Island in search of a Northwest Passage to the Orient; Sir John Davis explored the west coast of Greenland and discovered the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina; Sir John Hawkins turned handsome profits for himself and his investors (including the queen) in the vicious business of privateering and slave trading; Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe led an expedition, financed by Sir Walter Ralegh, to Virginia; Ralegh himself ventured up the Orinoco Delta, in what is now Venezuela, in search of the mythical land of El Dorado. Accounts of these and other exploits were collected by a clergyman and promoter of empire, Richard Hakluyt, and published as The Principal Navigations (1589; expanded edition 1599. "To seek new worlds for gold, for praise, for glory," as Ralegh characterized such enterprises, was not for the faint of heart: Gilbert, Drake, Cavendish, Frobisher, and Hawkins all died at sea, as did large numbers of those who sailed under their command. Elizabethans who were sensible enough to stay at home could do more than read written accounts of their fellow countrymen's far-reaching voyages. From India and the Far East, merchants returned with coveted spices and fabrics; from Egypt, they imported ancient mummies, thought to have medicinal value; from the New World, explorers brought back native plants (including, most famously, tobacco), animals, cultural artifacts, and, on occasion, samples of the native peoples themselves, most often seized against their will. There were exhibitions in London of a kidnapped Eskimo with his kayak and of Algonkians from Virginia with their canoes. Most of these miserable captives, violently uprooted and vulnerable to European diseases, quickly perished, but even in death they were evidently valuable property: when the English will not give one small coin "to relieve a lame beggar," one of the characters in Shakespeare's Tempest wryly remarks, "they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian". Perhaps most nations define what they are by defining what they are not. This negative self-definition is, in any case, what Elizabethans seem constantly to be doing, in travel books, sermons, political speeches, civic pageants, public exhibitions, and theatrical spectacles of otherness. The extraordinary variety of these exercises (which include public executions and urban riots, as well as more benign activities) suggests that the boundaries of national identity were by no means clear and unequivocal. Inspired by Amerigo Vespucci's accounts of the New World discoveries, Thomas More fashioned in Utopia (NAEL 1.506) a searching critique of English society. Descriptions of the lands and peoples of America often invoke Ovid's vision of the Golden Age, invariably with an implied contrast to the state of affairs at home. Even peoples whom English writers routinely, viciously stigmatised as irreducibly alien — Italians, Indians, Turks, and Jews — have a surprising instability in the Elizabethan imagination and may appear for brief, intense moments as powerful models to be admired and emulated before they resume their place as emblems of despised otherness. In the course of urging his countrymen to seize the land, rob the graves, and take the treasures of Guiana, Sir Walter Ralegh finds much to praise in the customs of the native peoples (NAEL 1.885–87); Thomas Hariot thinks that the inhabitants of Virginia, though poor in comparison with the English, are "ingenious" and show much "excellency of wit" (NAEL 1.901); "Let the cannons roar," writes Michael Drayton in his Ode. To the Virginia Voyage, even as he praises Virginia as "Earth's only paradise" (NAEL 1.968). Perhaps the most profound exploration of this instability was written not by an Englishman but by the French nobleman Montaigne, whose brilliant essay Of Cannibals, translated by the gifted Elizabethan John Florio, directly influenced Shakespeare's Tempest and no doubt worked its subversive magic on many other readers as well. http://www.wwnorton.com/nael/16century/topic_2/welcome.htm

Gordon Parks: True Renaissance man (Part 1)

http://www.temple.edu/photo/photographers/parks2/biol.html

Photographer, writer, movie director, and composer, Gordon Parks is a giant among the men of any era. The youngest of fifteen children, Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks was born on November 30th 1912 to Sarah Ross Parks and Andrew Jackson Parks in Fort Scott, Kansas. Although the family was poor the parents instilled in the children the values of honor, education, and equality. Parks’ travels would begin at the age of 16 with the death of his mother. He was sent to St. Paul Minnesota to live with his sister and her husband. After an argument with his sister’s husband, he was asked to leave the house. He took a job as a busboy at the Hotel Lowry in St. Paul where in his spare time he played the piano and wrote songs. Upon being heard by a band leader, Parks was asked to join the band and go on tour. Sadly, the group disbanded while in New York City.

Early Interest in Photography
While working on the railroad, Parks became interested in photography. He would take his first pictures while traveling in Seattle WA. When he returned to Minneapolis, he dropped the film off at Eastman Kodak. According to Parks, “The man at Kodak told me the shots were very good and if I kept it up, they would give me an exhibition.” And it was Kodak that sponsored his first exhibition.

Against many obstacles, Parks began to make a name for himself as a fashion photographer. After seeing his work, Marva Louis (wife of boxing champ Joe Louis) persuaded Parks to move to Chicago to further his career. It was in Chicago that his documentary photographs won him a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1942. The fellowship offered him his choice of employers and in January of 1942 he took a job with the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in Washington, D.C. When FSA was closed in 1943 he took a job with the Office of War Information. It was there that he began to write. He was assigned to photograph the training of the 332nd Fighter Group (also know as the Tuskegee Airmen). But his stay would be short. Not allowed to travel with the unit and document their participation in the war, Parks left the Office of War Information and moved back to Harlem.

Parks tried to secure a job with a major fashion magazine but many publishers like the Hearst Organization (Harper’s Bazaar), would not hire a Black man. But this did not discourage Parks. Famed photographer Edward Steichen was impressed with Parks’ work and sent him to the director of Vogue magazine, Alexander Liberman. Towards the end of 1944 Parks had photos appearing in both Glamour and Vogue magazines.

University of Bologna--one of the oldest of the modern universities (with thoughts on investing in good schools)

http://www.eng.unibo.it/PortaleEn/default.htm

Here is the English language link

to the University of Bologna,
one of the oldest universities in the world.

I say "one of the oldest of the modern universities," because it was of the type that is still functioning today.

The center of the agricultural economy was the farm.

The center of the industrial economy was the factory.

The center of the information economy is the school.

Universities worldwide are the highest form of school. It is not by accident we call university schooling "higher education." And it is not by accident that places, states, and nations that have good schools prosper in the information economy.

Those that have good universities will prosper the most.

Investing in good schools is a good investment. Investing in great universities is a greater investment.

California's investment in universities, colleges and schools in the 20th century is a classic example. Some people say it was the climate that led to its prosperity. Compare California to other places with pleasing climates.

It isn't just the climate of the weather--it's the educational climate that makes the most difference, in terms of prosperity for the information economy.

Johann Gutenberg: The Early Early Dave Winer

The Information Renaissance is an appropriate name and description of this current information age. Furthermore, discussing the similarities of major players between the European and Information Renaissances helps to clarify how critical this current age is within the progress of mankind.

Johann Gutenberg (1398-1468) is credited with implementing multiple technologies to create the movable type which made possible rapid printing. This innovation improved the ability of the printing press and was vital during the European Renaissance in mass production of books and other written materials. Gutenberg's contribution to printing capabilities during the Renaissance is very comparable to the work of Dave Winer.

Dave Winer (b. 1955) is credited as a pioneer in the world of blogging. His company UserLand Software was behind the creation of the hosting service, EditThisPage.com. They also ran an early aggregator, My.UserLand.com, which allowed users to track multiple weblogs. Winer also helped to develop technical specifications in the world of podcasting. The discussed work by Winer comprises just a few of his contributions to online information distribution; however the comparison to Gutenberg is uncanny. By using innovate techniques for distributing information; Winer is following the footsteps of his quite early predecessor in Johann Gutenberg.

Here are links and references used within this discussion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Winer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Gutenberg

Isabella d'Este--"The First Lady of the Renaissance"

http://www.yesnet.yk.ca/schools/projects/renaissance/renaissancewomen.html

Isabella d'Este is consider '"The First Lady of the Renaissance" because she was not the typical "Renaissance Woman." In the Renaissance times a Renaissance Woman was supposed to marry well, be loyal to her husband and give birth to boys. A Renaissance Man, on the other hand, had to be well-educated, have cultural grace, be a gentleman and understand the arts and sciences. He also had to have refinement, be of noble birth and have courage. Many women did not fit the mold of what they called a "Renaissance Woman." Many of them would fit in as more of a "Renaissance Man" or what we would call a "Renaissance Woman" in our day and age. Isabella patronized and promoted the arts. She allowed writers, artists and poets to exchange their ideas in her home. While she was ruling, she set an example for women to break away from the traditional role of what women were supposed to be like. By doing this and many other things she was known as the "First Lady of the Renaissance."'

My thoughts...
Isabella d'Este pioneered the women's movement. She helped to create a new meaning for what a "Renaissance Woman" is today. Her contributions paved the way for women to excel in the Information Age. Women today can play a traditional role and non-traditional role, we call them "Working Mothers."